


wicked games

by quentintarrantino



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentintarrantino/pseuds/quentintarrantino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s this man that wobbles his foundations and topples him from his throne, believing in nothing is still a belief to be questioned and it was never thought possible until Newton Geiszler with his tattoos like Joseph’s coat of dreams looked at him, religious imagery flashing like strobe lights behind his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wicked games

Newt wonders if he was born backwards, curling into himself when the other kids his age flourished. He would lay a field by his house and watch the sky, wishing something spectacular would happen to him that would change his life. Something that would make someone for just once need him, and he would squint his face up so tight and let his breath build up in his chest until it burned and he hoped that somewhere someone was listening to him and when it became apparent nothing was going to change he’d pick up his backpack and trudge home to lay on his bed and watch monster movies.

He’s at MIT when Trespasser finds San Francisco. He watches from his dorm on the TV as the giant beast hauls itself out of the ocean and destroys the city like the concrete is paper and glue. Someone somewhere was listening, every wish built up and took the form of this heaving creature that’s killing and destroying and Newton’s penance takes the form of a fresh tattoo that curls around his arm like a sharp tendril and stings so bad that his eyes water for a week after he gets it. He changes majors, engineering to biology and he throws himself into his work with more fervor than usual, he keeps up to date PPDC, he begins to investigate case studies of the carcass of this thing. Kaiju they call it, the name is warm and familiar, it drudges up memories of a nine year old boy wearing pajamas on cold German mornings watching Godzilla. They want to kill it, and the others that begin to drag themselves from the sea, as unyielding as the seasons and twice as cruel, they want to destroy them but Newton wants to see them, he wants to feel the coarse hide under his fingers as he slices them open. Newton wants to understand them.

\--

He’s been calling himself Hannibal so long sometimes he forgets his own name, no one calls him that anymore, whatever it was it doesn’t matter because there’s no one around to remember who he was before he set up shop in the dingy bone slums selling bone powder for ten yen a kilo. His mother used to tell him that if he ever wanted to get ahead then he would need to learn to make sacrifices, to give up what he wanted most in favor of what he needed. That’s the first phrase of many he tattoos on himself, right down his back, at twenty one when he is deployed to Hong Kong.

He was born sick and frail. He grew up quiet and wispy with hair so blonde it looked white and skin that was so easily bruised it was made into a game by his classmates. Asthmatic, useless, a burden to his mother who worked so hard to ensure that their apartment in New York was heated through the winter so he didn’t get sick again and spend more weeks in the hospital. Her jobs mounted up and still she never forgot a thing, always there for him. His mother was the one woman he’s ever truly loved, she deserved so much more then what she got, she could’ve had a nice life but she got him and a husband who beat her regularly before he took off for good. She sacrificed what she loved most for what he needed, and she died by herself in the apartment in Brooklyn he grew up in while he was at sea.

He’s thirty eight when the US military issues warnings and he begins to get orders from a new organization called the PPDC, footage of Trespasser crushing San Francisco underfoot playing on every electronic device in a hundred mile radius. He leaves, walking right out of the base because this changes everything. His mother had always been religious, a Lutheran who went to church every Sunday and he’s glad she’s dead for once. She would see this beast coming out of the ocean and weep because her God has abandoned them. When the world is ending it’s much more difficult to keep your convictions.

These creatures don’t die, they don’t stop, they are resilient and destroy everything in their path. He can admire them for this quality, chaos has always appealed to him, the notion that once something has built up enough momentum nothing can stop it. Before he grew, before his body decided to let him build muscles and his frame filled out, he sat in his bed wishing to the gray of the Brooklyn sky that he would one day be big enough to set the world ablaze and no one could stop him. His teachers called him wild and unruly, he joined the military because they promised he could see the world, his mother urged him to accept their offers. The structure would be good for him.

At forty one years old he watches Reckoner die on the shores of Hong Kong with a city left in ruin, people falling ill and dying just like all over the rest of the world. Those who worship them rush with anything they can to cut pieces of the beast off to add to shrines and temples, people say they can heal because they are sent by the gods or are gods themselves, people sell body parts and they are bought up almost instantly.  He kills a man in the street who tries to steal what he’s harvested and no one pays him any mind, the gash in the poor bastards throat opening and closing like a fish’s mouth as he grabs the threadbare hems of his jacket and watches him until his eyes grow cold. The people rush and he looks up to see the towering corpse and smiles because momentum has begun to build.

He lost his convictions a long time ago, fire is sparking.

\--

For every monster that pulls itself from the water there’s a new tattoo on Newton’s body. It’s in poor taste, even his family is horrified when he visits at Christmas and he pulls his jacket off and they see them. Multicolored and brilliant, made in God’s own likeliness he thinks, man is much too frail to share the same image of their creators.

He doesn’t believe in anything anymore, he thought maybe once he did when he was young. That was before PPDC signed him on and man began to build machines that could match the monsters, watching a Jaeger rise to fight is a religious awakening all its own. Newton’s worship is his research, he prays to the numbers and the steady thrum of AC DC in the echoes of his lab, he finds salvation in his stuffy coworker Hermann’s incessant screaming for him to shut up and let him work in peace. His faith is the hum of a needle poking into his skin clearing his head like a swirling crystal spring. Newt leans his head back against the sticky plastic of the chair and feels his collarbone bleed, and it’s beautiful.

He’s never seen a Kaiju, not alive, only the samples that are ferried in at intervals. He wants to look them in the eye, to see them in all their horrifying glory. The pilots connect their minds to each other to fight these creatures, words like drift compatibility and neural loads. Newt doesn’t think he’s drift compatible with anyone, the idea of latching his brain to someone else, to feel what they feel, it’s more frightening then the thought of being swallowed alive by these beautiful demons. He thinks he’s more afraid of what they’ll see then of what they have stashed away under those delicate layers of flesh and brain tissue, he lays in bed at night and stares at his ceiling thinking long and hard about the wishes he made in that field so many years ago. He wished for purpose and here it was, enough purpose to end the world and it’s his responsibility to stop it. Most nights he doesn’t sleep until Hermann drags him away from the lab and forces him to go to bed.

\--

While everyone was so busy worrying about the monsters burning down their cities they forgot to look amongst themselves, a new figure cloaked in expensive silk and elaborate knives begins to rise from the ash of a dying ghetto. A foreigner with a strong accent and hands big enough to punch a man’s nose into his skull, people fear him because of his presence and when he introduces himself by his new name they bow and nod like he was born with it, like he is an emperor heralding in a new age. The power of the Kaiju is spread by rumor, dying children recovering from bone powder and blindness healed by the ground up meat of the liver, they are frantic to get their hands on them. This is where he makes his business, in the shadows of the bones that made him what he is now, selling pieces of demons to saints. The flesh infects them, the slums are violent and there is no room for those who don’t want to spill blood, he makes deals and hires thugs, the police cannot touch him and look the other way when he enters an establishment.

A sick child with a god complex, the messiah to this war torn world who offers nothing but powders and potions to heal the wounded and work for the poor so long as they can pay the price. There is no guilt for a while but then his head begins to feel heavy with the weight of the tortured souls, he has to buy new clothes, there isn’t a suit he owns that doesn’t have someone else’s blood on it.

It’s worth it, the scar on his eye afforded to him years ago begins to impair his sight, the sunglasses are a barrier between him and the consequences of his actions. He reclines in his bunker when the Kaiju attack with a glass of scotch older then he is and he listens to the people scream while he reads the evening paper, his Cantonese has improved tremendously. He remembers every time someone pushed his face into the dirt when he was a boy and laughs alone with his possessions, a gilded life is better than no life at all, his laughter rings hollow, his bodyguards do not smile.

\--

The drift nearly kills him, he wakes up on the ground with blurry faces staring at him, the lights forming halos around their heads and he wonders briefly if he’s ascended to a higher level until the ringing in his ears dies down and he remembers where he is. Heaven hasn’t been within reach in a long time.

Hermann is beside himself, he’s not even bothering to speak English, every jagged word coming out is composed entirely of German and Newt catches it all. He could’ve died, he could’ve scrambled his brain inside his head, so many things could’ve ended his life in this process but he survived it, the burst blood vessels in his eye are a tribute to his bravery. Something like elation bubbles to the surface, he isn’t nine anymore, he isn’t watching the monster movies in his living room, he’s become the monster. The Kaiju felt him and know he’s there, their gaping maws threatening to gorge themselves on his sanity but with trembling fingers he puts his glasses back on his face and smiles. He’s looked God right in the face, his redemption is right around the corner in the form of a red card and a black light pressed into his palms by the Marshal, urging to him to seek out a man he only knows from the silhouette on a grainy screen. Parts of his body he knows aren’t there flex and unfurl, he resists the urge to rip his skin from his skull and roar his displeasure with the human condition to the rain. Flashes of thoughts he knows don’t belong to him push and scratch at his brain, the pull to join these creatures in the ocean, to swim until his lungs turn to gills and he can see them emerge from the Breach. Newt is losing his mind, he takes as many pills as he can jam into his mouth to calm his heart rate and stumbles into a cab, the bone slums, take him there.

The sea of people are oblivious to him, hell is objective but awash by the red glow of the lanterns he thinks this is the closest he’ll ever come. He comes with divine purpose, to save the world, dampen the flames and his eye burns like it’s been set on fire, the Kaiju rustle about inside his head, their hisses and growls no longer hold the same offers of enlightenment.

\--

Newton Geiszler has the deranged look of a man whose entire world is collapsing on top of itself. His lips tremble and his words are tinged with doubt, the sinner in his cathedral devoted to power and strength.

He is small and frail and weak, Hannibal could kill him then and there with a delicate flick of his knife and he almost does, a man from the PPDC coming into his operation and asking so many questions is bad for business. It’s something in the way his eyes widen and his voice cracks that makes him stop because he is violently reminded of himself, a lifetime ago. He puts the knife away instead and watches the small man talk like he’ll die if he stops, hands moving and his entire body shaking.

It’s this man that wobbles his foundations and topples him from his throne, believing in nothing is still a belief to be questioned and it was never thought possible until Newton Geiszler with his tattoos like Joseph’s coat of dreams looked at him, religious imagery flashing like strobe lights behind his eyes. Hannibal stops believing in hollow empires and starts believing in him, something as shifting as the tides, the false prophet that will be his undoing but when it begins to unravel he won’t mind.

\--

The Kaiju are cracked idols, clones sent from the netherworld on orders, Otachi is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and like a siren’s song he wants to run to her. He wants to feel her teeth tear the muscle from his bones and the acid of her body dissolve him to become one with her, the leather of her wings and the sting of her tongue promise euphoria, the death of so many others but his would be a martyr’s end. The empty menace he is faced with is baffling, the moment he waited his entire life to experience passes in seconds and the eyes he looks into are not those of a misunderstood giant but a true demon who wants to drag him into her hell, to scream at her misery. His temple falls one pillar at a time and for once in his life he fears the Kaiju because he knows that they are not like he thought they were at all, they are chaos in its purest form, they kill and destroy simply because they can. In the eyes of Otachi he sees the hooded gaze of Hannibal Chau baring his golden teeth at him and revelation presses its lips to his and exhales strong and sharp.

A man on his knees, disillusioned. Enlightenment strikes not with the touch of the Kaiju but in the broad shoulders of a man wearing a red silk suit with sunglasses darker then the black of the sky. The menace in his snarl holds life behind it and a fire Newt wants to study and pull apart with his forceps, to peel back until the skin is red and raw, Hannibal’s tattoos are the color of a fresh bruise, a deep blue and Newt’s are bleached under the moon to look the same.

\--

They’re two reactive elements placed in the most explosive environment in the world, people feel their energy when they share a room and everything is either whispers or shouts. Brutality or ghosts of absolutions, there is no middle ground and each one is daring the other to show weakness. Newton bends but never breaks and Hannibal is ragged like a rusty sword that is waiting to stab you when you put your guard down, in a world where nothing is constant they anchor to each other. Existentialism was never Hannibal’s strong point but his loyalty is unwavering, he is reminded every time he presses his hand to Newt’s cheek how easy it would be to squeeze his neck until he stops breathing, he’d burn the Sistine Chapel down for him if he asked but he never does, he looks at him with doe eyes like he is ignorant to the power in his hands and it makes the muscles in his neck tense up and his jaw clench.

Newt doesn’t understand the way his world spins, he doesn’t ever see the army of guards that follow him when he wanders around the slums, scooping things up and reading books while those who wish him harm lurk in the shadows. He doesn’t understand that it’s whispered in the darkest reaches of Hong Kong that the man who leaves a mark on him might as well have signed his own death warrant, because Hannibal Chau will hunt him down himself and rip him limb from limb and no one questions it.

Newton doesn’t call him by his real name, he doesn’t call him by anything. His name is the feelings of his fingers trailing across the scar on his face, the curious squint when he looks at him as though it was themselves who drifted and not him and a dead brain. He looks at him like a man possessed and when he wakes up screaming in the night, haunted by the visions of his false gods it’s his name he calls with his touch.

\--

There’s burns on his temple from where his makeshift drift machine sat on his head, they scar faintly and he wears them like the stigmata when he enters the cult temples paying homage to the Kaiju, looking upon them bowing to what they believed were the fearsome dragons of heaven, sent to right humanity’s wrongs. The war has made monsters of them all it would seem, he looks in the mirror and sees someone who is not himself and he thinks that the little boy wishing in the field has been dead for years.

Hannibal is twisted, a cold piece of metal that has cooled into the shape it will take for the rest of its life, and he finds solace in it. He had believed in the Kaiju for so long, in the reality of science and numbers and back when everything had been simpler he had comforted himself with them. The unpredictability he finds in the underbelly of Hong Kong is life, teeming and struggling to survive but life still, a bug vainly wiggling away from the shoe that is pinning it down.

When there’s nothing left you must rebuild. Newt latches onto Hannibal, when he looks at him he sees the Kaiju, volatile and angry and spiteful but deeper there’s something that’s wilted a long time ago slowly coming back to life. People assume he’s the weak one, they think he doesn’t see how important he is to him but Newton sees more then they think he does. The scarring on their eyes match, but Newt leaves his uncovered, he finds strength in weakness, it’s his will alone that Hannibal would concede to. Running from religion he finds himself a deity in his own right, they yell and scream and their cheeks fill with blood because they have never been more alive than they are now.

\--

With enough momentum built behind something you cannot stop it unless it meets an immovable object.

He could no more move Newt then he could swallow the sun.

\--

Hannibal has forgotten his own name, Newton has not.

His final reparation for sins long since passed is the feel of a needle stabbing him over and over again while he tilts his head back and feels the gun work its way to match the curve of his shoulder, letters woven together to form a singular name that ooze blood at the slightest provocation.

\--

The fires all burn out eventually, even gods must die and the strongest empires must fall.

He feels a small hand tuck itself into his and they stand side by side as their sins are purged. 


End file.
